Man tied to Colo. prison chief death dies in Texas

This undated photo released by the Colorado Department of Corrections shows paroled inmate Evan Spencer Ebel. Ebel, 28, is the man who led Texas authorities on a 100 mph car chase that ended in a shootout Thursday, March 21, 2013, and may be linked to the slaying of Colorado's state prison chief. (

/ AP

This undated photo released by the Colorado Department of Corrections shows paroled inmate Evan Spencer Ebel. Ebel, 28, is the man who led Texas authorities on a 100 mph car chase that ended in a shootout Thursday, March 21, 2013, and may be linked to the slaying of Colorado's state prison chief. (AP Photo/Colorado Department of Corrections)

This undated photo released by the Colorado Department of Corrections shows paroled inmate Evan Spencer Ebel. Ebel, 28, is the man who led Texas authorities on a 100 mph car chase that ended in a shootout Thursday, March 21, 2013, and may be linked to the slaying of Colorado's state prison chief. (AP Photo/Colorado Department of Corrections) (/ AP)

ANGELA K. BROWN and P. SOLOMON BANDA, Associated Press

A medical examiner's office says a man identified as a parolee possibly linked to the slaying of Colorado's state prisons chief has died after he was gravely wounded in a high-speed police chase in Texas.

Tarrant County Medical Examiner's spokesman Roger Metcalf says a man police believe is 28-year-old Evan Spencer Ebel has died and an autopsy has begun. Metcalf says the man's identity still must be officially confirmed through fingerprint analysis.

Colorado police have been trying to determine whether Ebel is linked to the Tuesday killing of Tom Clements at his home in Monument, near Colorado Springs.

Ebel led Texas deputies on a 100-mph car chase Thursday that ended when he crashed into a semi and opened fire. His pursuers gunned him down.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.

Investigators from three Colorado police agencies rushed to Texas to determine if a former inmate who was critically wounded by Texas police after a harrowing 100-mph car chase is linked to the slaying of Colorado's state prisons chief.

The suspect drove a black Cadillac with Colorado license plates, which matched the description of a car spotted outside Tom Clements' home in Monument, Colo., just before he was fatally shot while answering his front door Tuesday evening.

Evan Spencer Ebel, 28, was gravely wounded in the clash with police Thursday. Authorities said he was not expected to survive and was hooked up to equipment for organ harvesting.

Colorado investigators immediately headed to Texas to determine whether Ebel was linked to Clements' slaying and the killing Sunday of Nathan Leon, a Denver pizza delivery man. Police in Colorado would only say the connection to the Leon case is strong but would not elaborate or say if they believe Ebel killed Clements and Leon.

The Denver Post first reported Ebel's name, and that he was in a white supremacist prison gang called the 211s. A federal law enforcement official confirmed his identity and gang affiliation to The Associated Press. The official was not authorized to speak publicly about the case and spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity.

Ebel is not on the radar of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks extremist groups, but the center rates the gang as one of the most vicious white supremacist groups operating in the nation's prisons, comparable to the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas. Founded in 1995 to protect white prisoners from attacks, it operates only in Colorado and has anywhere from between a couple hundred to 1,000 members, senior fellow Mark Potok said Friday.

The gang has grown into a sophisticated criminal enterprise where members are assigned military titles like "general" and extort money from fellow prisoners, regardless of race. Released members are expected to make money to support those still in prison, Potok said. He said members have to attack someone to get in and can only get out by dying.

"It's blood in and blood out," he said.

In 2005, 32 members were indicted for racketeering and the gang's founder, Benjamin Davis, was sentenced to over 100 years in prison.

The killing of Clements, 58, shocked his quiet neighborhood in Monument, a town of rolling hills north of Colorado Springs, for its brutality: He answered the door of his home Tuesday evening and was gunned down. Authorities wouldn't say if they thought the attack was related to his job, and all Clements' recent public activities and cases were scrutinized.

The Texas car chase started when a sheriff's deputy in Montague County, James Boyd, tried to pull over the Cadillac around 11 a.m. Thursday, authorities there said. They wouldn't say exactly why he was stopped, but called it routine.

The driver opened fire on Boyd, wounding him, Wise County Sheriff David Walker said at an afternoon news conference in Decatur. He then fled south before crashing into a semi as he tried to elude his pursuers.

After the crash, he got out of the vehicle, shooting at deputies and troopers who had joined the chase. He shot at Decatur Police Chief Rex Hoskins four times as the chief tried to set up a roadblock.

"He wasn't planning on being taken alive," Hoskins said.

Boyd, the deputy who was shot, was wearing a bulletproof vest and was at a Fort Worth hospital, authorities said. Officials had said he wasn't seriously injured but later said his condition was unknown.

Legal records show Ebel was convicted of several crimes in Colorado dating back to 2003, including assaulting a prison guard in 2008. He apparently was paroled, but Colorado Department of Corrections spokeswoman Alison Morgan said she could not release information on prisoners because of the ongoing investigation into Clements' death.

Scott Robinson, a criminal defense attorney and media legal analyst, represented Ebel in 2003 and 2004. He said Ebel had been sentenced to a halfway house for a robbery charge in 2003 before he was accused in two additional robbery cases the following year that garnered prison sentences of three and eight years.

"I thought he was a young man who was redeemable, otherwise I wouldn't have taken the case," Robinson said, saying he didn't recall the details of the case.

Robinson said he knew Ebel before he got in trouble. He said Ebel was raised by a single father and had a younger sister who died in a car accident years ago.

Vicky Bankey said Ebel was in his teens when she lived across from him in suburban Denver until his father moved a couple of years ago. She remembers seeing Ebel once jump off the roof of his house. "He was a handful. I'd see him do some pretty crazy things," she said.

"He had a hair-trigger temper as a kid. But his dad was so nice," Bankey said.

Ebel's father didn't return an after-hours phone message left at his business.

Clements came to Colorado in 2011 after working three decades in the Missouri prison system. Missouri Department of Corrections spokeswoman Mandi Steele said Thursday the department was ready to help in the probe if asked.

The last public official killed in Colorado in the past 10 years was Sean May, a prosecutor in suburban Denver. An assailant killed May as he arrived home from work. Investigators examined May's court cases, but the case remains unsolved.